This disclosure relates generally to automating selection of gifts, and more specifically to managing fairness as a result of gift purchase and redemption.
Customer-centric businesses devise marketing strategies to obtain new customers and to maintain existing customers. Businesses generally reach out to customers via direct marketing such as advertising their products and services, which may include providing deals or discounts on their products or services via email or other electronic communication. Many direct marketing efforts have low response rates, since customers tend to view it as spam. Deals and discounts may get more attention, but may generate “one-time” customers, and if used too frequency can lower a company's perceived value. While loyal customers are often gifted with discounts or gifts by a business, those discounts and gifts tend to be for the own business' products. Customers may prefer to receive a gift from another business. However, even if a business gifted a customer with another business' product, the purchasing business has little guarantee that the customer will enjoy the other business' product, or that the other business will return the favor. Existing gift networks allow a business to select a gift from a catalog of gifts but without the consideration to fairness on assignment of gifts over the network. Similarly, existing customer loyalty systems select gifts or rewards for customers without consideration to fairness on assignment of rewards over the network.